One Word
by creepygirl13
Summary: One word, and it could all have been different. This is a collection of things that never happened to the Circle.


Diclaimer: You know, I'm pretty sure that Tamora Pierce's stuff doesn't belong to me.

Author's Note(Which you should probably read): Hey, I know it's repetitive. You don't need to tell me this. You also don't need to tell me the characters are OOC, or that they wouldn't do that or this, _**because I know**_. Deal with it. You do not have to tell me if you don't like it.

On the first day, the plants pulled apart the pieces.

(_Briar_)

1. Niko doesn't find him in time, and so he is sentenced to a hard, short life at the docks.

2. He can't save Rosethorn, and he feels helpless as he watches her life slip away, and curses the maker of the plague a thousand times over.

3. He lives with his mother until he is thirteen. Then the vicious plague which had scraped Emelan clean converges upon Hajra, and he dies, wondering about the people of Emelan, and why they died so soon.

4. He is at the docks when the madwoman decendes upon them. Whether she is an elemental, or cursed, or possesed, no one knows. The last thing he ever sees is her, with red hair flying, and grey eyes fierce and joyful, and her crazed, laughing voice heard over the crack of lightning that scorched the sky.

5. He is lucky, he supposes. He is mad, so they say, and they are sending him away, all the way to Winding Circle, in Emelan. He stares at his hands, at the vines that move slowly under his skin, and Niko looks worridly at him. He must be talking to himself again. Well, let the man be worried. He wasn't going to do anything.

On the second day, the flames ate the world.

(_Daja_)

1. They stop at Winding Circle, to trade, and she gazes with curiosity at the three children who had come to see. One, a girl with blue eyes, stares at her as if she had forgotten something she should remember. She lookes away quickly when Daja met her eyes.

2. She is afloat at sea for many days, and it becomes clear that help would not come. She lickes her salt-caked lips, and hot, unnoticed tears trail down her salt-white cheeks.

3. She washes ashore, unconscious, found by a ragged, redheaded girl who calls herself only Tris. She says that she has run away from her home, and doesn't even mind living with a Trader, as long as it means she has someone to speak to. Daja often wondered if she were mad.

4. At the last moment, she loses control. The fire breaks from her grip, and it engulfs first her, then the caravan, and then ravages the forest beyond. Later, the broken circle would wake up to find themselves without magic, for it had followed Daja into the abyss, where they soon joined it and her.

5. A long time later, the _trangshi_ would wonder what had driven her to do it. She had stared into the flame, and reached out. Before anyone could stop her, she held the fire in her hands, full of life and beauty and joy. But then, in a moment of madness, she had thrown it onto the deck, where it caught flame, and ran.

On the third day, the thread ensnared the people.

(_Sandry_)

1. They never find her, huddled in the dark. She is smothered by it, and her braid light had long since gone out. They never find her, and she dies, alone, in the dark.

2. They had found her, but they were too late. She has lost her voice, and cheerfulness, and the bright light behind her eyes that had made her Sandry. She stares dully ahead, and the greatest mindhealer alive could not bring her back from the darkness of the cellar.

3. They try to bind her to Namorn, and they succeed, for her foster family has not come with her, and they know nothing.

4. She slowly loses hope of them ever coming to find her, as the magical ties between her and them grow weaker, withered, and finally break. And she dies, alone, and back in the dark where she had began.

5. They almost find her, almost take her back, but they feel Ironel break the thinning strand. Her magic has stewed inside her for too long, and when she dies, they feel it, her damaged spirit fleeing the world as raw magic assults the Empress's palace. It is the first time that lightning strikes more than twice on the same day, and in the same place.

On the fourth day, the lightning lit the forests.

(_Tris_)

1. They say she is mad, or possessed, or part elemental. Well, she soon teaches them. Lightning slashes the air above Ninver, as the town burns to the ground.

2. The murderer catches her around the throat, and she panicks and vainly scrabbles at the cord around her neck. A few moments later, she falls, dead, to the ground, and the killer escapes yet again.

3. Tris giggles as she holds the dress up against her body. Her mother smiles as she looked at her, and is greatful for their family's good luck in daughters.

4. The pirate mage catches her, and holds them. She can't get free, though she struggles, striking viciously at him. Her lightning rebounds upon her and them, scorching their magical spirits beyond repair. They do not care, as long as they would be free from the pirate mages' terrible grasp.

5. Trisana is old, the last of her Circle still living. She smiles briefly at the girl by her bedside, Atonia, Briar's granddaughter, heavy with child herself. She is glad that she would die soon, and she tells the girl(woman, really) so. Atonia attemps to console sorrow that is nonexistant, and Tris finds the last thing she ever hears is Atonia's beautiful voice.

On the fifth day, the roses died.

(_Rosethorn_)

1. The girl runs, gasping, away from the bandits who would ruin her home. She spends two nights in the woods, but runs into the same bandits. The last thing she sees is their laughing faces. The last thing they see is thorns.

2. The poor, silent, noblegirl is more up Lark's alley than her own, but she finds her perpetually heartbroken blue eyes pulling her heartstrings, and she takes the girl under her wing.

3. Everyone hears about the madwoman. _She ripped up the docks in the town_, they say, _she has red hair like fire, and eyes like shining gray metal. _They didn't realize that she had enough power to rip apart the Temple. Rosethorn is the last to see the poor, mad girl, who is bloody, thin, and disheveled. This is where they lived, and it is where they all would die.

4. It isn't her who catches the sickness, but Briar. He is not as strong as she, and she won't let him go, but she must. She sees his wide, fearful green eyes as she holds his limp, cold hand, and her heart breaks a second time.

5. It is strange, but as she dies and Crane holds her hand, all rivalry forgotten, she wishes she could see that acrobat girl just one more time.

On the sixth day, the metal snapped.

(_Frostpine_)

1. He'd always wanted to meet another smith mage, but he never did. He sighs as he hears the news of another Trader ship attacked by pirates. There were no survivors.

2. He never forgives himself for losing Daja in the flames, and her choked screams of agony invade his every thought. He should never have let her come here, should have protected her more, taught her more. But Daja is no longer here, and she misses so much of her life-almost as much as Frostpine misses her.

3. He had at first thought that Daja was a nice, solid, sensible girl. But it becomes more and more clear to him that she is mad, utterly mad. Her laughing at accidentally burning Kirel, her mad shrieks of joy as Winding Circle is attacked by pirates, and her magic, which is so twisted, so tangled, she never really gets it under control. She is as mad as the mute noblewoman, as the redheaded lightning mage who kills without remorse, even joy. She is as mad as the muttering, tattooed plantmage that the healers had brought in two years ago, only Daja is worse, because Frostpine knows her, and knows her well.

4. As the fire creeps closer and closer to Winding Circle, Daja and Forstpine, grown, maginificent smith mages, run to stop it. But it has engulfed the entire town of Summersea, and even the water the Daja's sister, Tris, brings, and Daja and Frostpine's efforts cannot stop it. They are all eaten by the ever-hungry flames.

5. The ocean devours flame, quenches its life, cold and unforgiving, but that is not why he fears it. The lakes are cold, ice colder. Both will steal your breath before you open your mouth, but that is not why he fears it. He fears it because of the mad weather mage, because of the mute noblewoman, because of the muttering plant mage. Because of Daja. They will follow the mad weather witch's lead, and though the healers and the mindhealers try to put the shattered pieces of their minds back together, he knows it will never happen. They have already put themselves back together, but there is no healing them, not truly. He knows that they will kill again, and they will pick the sea below to do it, if they do not do it themselves.

On the seventh day, the thread engulfed them all.

(_Lark_)

1. She would be an acrobat till she grew old and her form broke, she promised herself, and she never met Rosethorn.

2. She had seen Rosethorn take to the mute noblewoman, so she pulls the tattooed plantmage under her wing, and tries to shelter him from the world.

3. The last things she sees are Sandry's ever blank face, Tris's ever flying red hair, Daja's metal-capped staff, and Briar's manic grin. She's not sure why they do this, but she knows they are mad, and the pieces of their minds have been put together the wrong way. The last thing she hears is Tris's giggle, and the last thing she manages to do is mouth "I'm sorry," though she's not sure what she's sorry for.

4. She holds Rosethorn's hand, and feels her heartbeat slow, and her breathing stop. Lark knows that nothing can bring Rosethorn back, and wishes that Rosethorn had been able to teach another plantmage, just once.

5.Everything was wonderful. Until the armies of the Empress decended upon Emelan, in search of Sandry. The worst part is, Lark knows that Sandry and her siblings would die before going back to Namorn. The sad part is, Lark knows that she and the four's teachers would as well.

On the eighth day, the world seemed to shatter.

(_Niko_)

1. The last thing he knows is that he had it after all...he'd always had magic, and his family knew, and hated him for it. So when the town burns, and he is trapped, no one comes to save him.

2. He tucks the little girl Trisana under his wing, and later found that the sweet, shivering girl he had rescued from her family and the rain had weather magic. Trisana smiles sadly when he tells her, and says that she always knew she was different. She tells him she hopes he's not angry, and when he assures her that he is not, she smiles widely and hugs him tightly, proclaiming she'll never leave him, and that she's so, so happy that she found him.

3. Daja is the only one who returns from Namorn, haggard and worn, tears streaking her face, cuts and burns adorning her arms, legs, and face. When he asks her what happened, she only says that they're all dead, that everyone is dead, and collapses into his arms. He has never had to cry for a student before, but now he finds he's crying for three, and is seems like he's the only one who is capable of consoling her. He thinks, in a calm, icy corner of his mind, that it is strange that it is he, not Lark or Frostpine or even Rosethorn, holding her shaking body and letting her cry on his shoulder. 

4. He never forgives himself for not helping Trisana and the others when he could, even though he hadn't known about them until they had shattered, and is still cursing himself when the mad four kill him.

5. Niko Daga has always loved his family, his son and his twin daughters, his beautiful mage wife, Niva, but he wishes there is more. And somehow, he always knows there was more for him, but he missed it. 

On the ninth day, the stones came crashing down.

(_Evvy_)

1. She's always curious about the green-eyed , rich-looking mage student she saw in the market that one day, but she's never sure why. She's angry at herself when she finds she misses him when he and his teacher leave.

2. When she meets his sisters, she is afraid. They are madder than evenBriar is.

3. Surprisingly enough, she lived to fifteen. But the year she turned sixteen was also the year of the once-mighty Chammur's fall, when everything crumbled to dust.

4. When she runs away from her master, she goes west, to Winding Circle. Briar doesn't meet her until he comes back, and he never is really friends with her.

5. She is taught by Jebilu Stoneslicer, who teaches her well. After all, her is the best stone mage in Chammur. 

On the tenth day, the glass struck like lightning.

(_Kethlun_)

1. He is terrified of his teacher. She seems relatively normal on the surface, but he sees the mad fury in her eyes when she hears of the murderer. He sees her play with lightning in the rain, and he listens when Niklaren warns her to be careful with Kethlun. And he sees as she kills the murderer, a mad laugh on her lips, and terrible joy in her eyes.

2. Well, he supposed, he didn't have to walk by the Syth today. He had things to do, after all.

3. The lighting struck him squarely on the top of his head, and the very last thing he thinks is how strangely beautiful the lightning is.

4. He cries out as he sees Trison the ground, her hands caught around an invisible cord in death. He chases the figure fleeting into the shadows, only to have the killer slip away from him yet again. He goes back to Tris's still-warm body, and holds her in his arms, and when Niko and Dema make it to the scene, his eyes overflow and he can't hold the tears back. 

5. He never regained the ability to speak. Or to move his left half. All he could do was sit around and let other people do things for him. He didn't really mind, because he knew he wouldn't live long anyway.

end

Wow...

Long thing here. Took me forever to write. Yeah, a bunch of these little fragments are related to each other. Yeah, they're kind of repetitive and involve people dying.

Well, it could have happened.

-Creepygirl


End file.
